The bird eats a building

The bird lands in a puddle,
instantly shattering the reflection of a building,
which she eats in pieces
like a cracker crushed in soup.
She dips her wings into pavement,
throws her head backwards,
gargles the second floor copier before flying away,
leaving the puddle to grow a skyscraper—
like Prometheus developing a new liver each night,
the price for stealing fire.

- Danielle Hanson, from Ambushing Water

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

- Billy Collins

The Gardener

Have I lived enough?
Have I loved enough?
Have I considered Right Action enough,
have I come to any conclusion?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
Have I endured loneliness with grace?

I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.
Actually, I probably think too much.

Then I step out into the garden,
where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,
is tending his children, the roses.

- Mary Oliver

Pangs

It's my turn to enter the realm of beauty,
to be ground into a flickering light.
I've had to suppress my emotions and rely on reason alone.
Evening prayer tears my gown.
And I don't know when I will be able to rest
with pious whispers under your hands.
But none of this matters now because I want to lay bare my soul:
black, black, black, black, black.

Everything is flowering strangely.
I love you, I must see you again, but I can't be tied down.
For weeks I've been in commotion, turning my brain, and about what?
Disjointed thoughts which I've brought with me from the great valleys
of the sea,
and a letter, probably from a madman, stating that I am certain to become very rich,
and some of the exquisite pain of early spring...

Forgive me and have pity on me and send a present.
No gardener in his senses blames a rose.
I crossed Paris like a meteor. In Vienna I regained composure,
but all this time I've felt quite odd, as if I couldn't do anything right.
I doubt I could even shoot a bird with an arrow,
and Robert tells me that the glorious fresh air of his father's farm,
the birch trees, the clear skies,
would only confuse me.

Damn those who said that I was loafing in the city!
My last pennies are spent and I'm suffering the pangs.
It's as if I'm only half-existing, like the shadow of the pyramids.
I'll try to explain, even though I don't really understand it myself.
There's too much 'Scythian' uproar, too much sounding of alarms.
All the symptoms of all the disorders
come and go in a continual stream...I am enchanted...

- Emma Lew, from Crow College